Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime: Samsung’s smartphones have managed to impress us with their performance in recent times. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the mid-range handsets from the company, which have been unable match the competition in their respective price bands. One of the reasons has been the entry of new Chinese vendors who are offering better features at each price level.

For Samsung, the arrival of Galaxy J-series was a turning point. According to an IDC data released, the Galaxy J-series has been received well in the Indian market and has driven a large proportion of Samsung’s smartphone shipments. Samsung has launched a number of smartphones in this series in the last quarter. Capitalizing their popularity, the company also recently launched the Galaxy J5 Prime and Galaxy J7 Prime smartphones. Of the two, we received the Galaxy J7 Prime for review.

The new Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime features a metal body, supports 4G, packs a large battery, and has a fingerprint scanner. The company is also heavily marketing India-specific “smart” features called S Power Planning, S bike mode and S Secure, which have been developed by its R&D centers in India. In our first impressions, the Galaxy J7 Prime looked like a solid competitor in its price segment, but will it be able to live up to our expectations?

Specifications and software:

Samsung Galaxy j7

The new Galaxy J7 Prime is powered by an octa-core Samsung Exynos 7870 processor clocked at 1.6GHz coupled with 3GB of RAM. There is 16GB of inbuilt storage, while microSD cards of up to 256GB are also supported. This dual-SIM phone supports two Nano-SIMs with 4G connectivity on both, though only one can connect to 4G at a time. There’s a 13-megapixel rear autofocus camera with f/1.9 aperture and a LED flash. There is also an 8-megapixel front-facing camera. The phone has a non-removable 3300mAh battery. Connectivity options on the Galaxy J7 Prime include GPRS/ EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n/AC, GPS/A-GPS, Bluetooth, and Glonass.

Running Android 6.0 Marshmallow comes with Samsung’s own TouchWiz UI layered on top. One of the biggest changes is the reduction in the amount of bloatware. Much like current high-end Samsung smartphones, the J7 Prime also comes preloaded with a number of Microsoft apps. The home screen also features a Google folder. the J7 Prime also comes with a folder packing a variety of Samsung apps.

the biggest highlights of the Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime are the new S Power Planning and S Secure features. There is also an ultra-data saving mode and S bike mode, though both these features have been seen on previous models.

Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime

Planning basically offers consumers three ways to get more out of the remaining battery life. The three options include Reserve Battery For Calls, which allocates a certain percentage of the battery for calls and messages; Extend Battery Time, which offers three power-saving levels to users to choose from; and Forward Calls, which as the name suggests, forwards calls to another number when the phone runs out of power.

S Power Planning is a different take by Samsung to extend battery life on the J7 Prime, compared to the usual Ultra Power Saving mode we’ve seen before. To compare, the Ultra Power Saving mode restricts the use of apps on the handset and turns off mobile data when the screen is off. It also shuts off battery-hungry functions such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS. There’s also a way to limit the use of Wi-Fi and mobile data in the background.

Camera

The Galaxy J7 Prime sports a 13-megapixel rear camera with a decently large f/1.9 aperture and a LED flash. The large aperture lets the handset capture more light per shot, resulting in detailed photos during the daytime. Most of the shots taken by the smartphone have good colors and are crisp. We noticed that the handset was able to lock focus quickly, which is an advantage.

Battery Life

The Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime is backed by a non-removable 3300mAh battery. In our video loop test, the handset ran for 14 hours and 50 minutes, which is not bad for a phone at this price. With medium usage, the Galaxy J7 Prime lasted for almost 36 hours after which we had to reach for a charger.